


When I feel like this, When i get so in to myself

by Sebastanbucky



Series: Stucky One-Shots [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Depression, Eating Disorders, Eventual Happy Ending, Happy Ending, Kinda, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, trans!bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 21:24:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20477702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sebastanbucky/pseuds/Sebastanbucky
Summary: Bucky gave up when he was seven, he gave up on the universe correcting its mistake.-----Or: Growing up is hard for anyone, and being trans definitely complicates things





	When I feel like this, When i get so in to myself

**Author's Note:**

> This is loosely based on my own experiences with being non-binary.
> 
> Title from Are You Ten Years Ago by Tegan and Sara;  
"When I feel like this  
When I get so in  
To myself  
I lose track of where I'm going and lose track of how to get going again  
I feel myself slowing down  
Feel myself turning around  
Is this taken?"

When Bucky was five, he was obsessed with being a boy. He would dream about it every night, waking up confused when he realized he’d just been dreaming. When he looked in the mirror, he saw long hair, pink clothes and a _girl_. But when he looked in his heart, he dreamt of cutting his hair, wearing boy clothes and for someone to just see that he was a boy. No one ever did, no matter how much he dreamt of it. He wished that he would wake up a boy one day and no one would remember that he had ever looked like a girl, everything would be just like it was supposed to be.

He started school when he was six. He often got confused when his teacher told the class to get into a group of girls and another of boys. He knew they expected him to go to the girls, but that didn’t feel right. He felt like he belonged with the boys. They were sat in groups of four or five desks in the classroom, his group had four other girls. Everyone called them the ‘girl group’, because they were the only group with only girls. He wanted to correct them, tell them that wasn’t right, but he could never make himself say it out loud.

Bucky gave up when he was seven. He knew that he was a girl, people can’t change their gender just because they want to. He gave up on the universe correcting its mistake. So he wore pink clothes with sequence, flowers and hearts on them, he stopped keeping his hair at shoulder length, setting a goal to have the longest hair of all the girls in his class, he went to the girl groups without thinking twice about it, he made friends with girls and avoided boys at all costs. He eventually forgot all about being a boy.

Bucky was eight the first time he learned about periods. They were told that all girls get their period when they start puberty. He didn’t understand why he got so scared, but he figured he was just scared of growing up. Periods seemed scary, bleeding once a month, and all the side effects that could come along with the periods, Bucky was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one who was terrified by it. He founds himself wishing he was a boy, of course just because boys don’t have periods.

At the age of nine he met a boy he couldn’t resist. He had promised to himself that he would never look at boys, ever, but this boy was being nice to him. It was weird to be friends with a boy, or friends with anyone at all, they were made fun off by some of the other kids at their school, but somehow Bucky didn’t care. Steve was special, he made Bucky feel okay. When they played together Steve would let him play with his toys. Toys that were made for boys, but Bucky didn’t care about that. Somehow it just felt right.

On Bucky’s tenth birthday his mom stopped inviting the whole class to his birthday party like she had done every other year. This year she invited only the girls, she said it was because Bucky’s a girl and it’s normal to only invite your gender when you get older. Bucky insisted that he didn’t want the girls, he just wanted Steve, but his mother just laughed. In the end she invited all the girls and Steve. Bucky felt so out of place in a room full of girls, he didn’t feel like one of them.

When Bucky came back from summer break, he noticed that everyone was acting different. He didn’t think turning eleven was going to make such a difference, but suddenly the girls were looking at the boys differently and the boys were doing stupid shit to get the girls attention. He didn’t understand why, but he didn’t like it. It made him uncomfortable, he couldn’t quite figure out if he should be with the girls, looking at the boys or with the boys, doing stupid shit. In the end he settled for neither. Steve seemed to be unsure too. Bucky didn’t understand why as Steve was so clearly a boy, but he was glad that he wasn’t the only one who stayed out of it.

When Bucky was twelve his body started changing. His chest was growing, and his hips were standing out, giving him more of an hourglass shape than the straight stick he had looked like before. He embraced it, dressed to show it off because that’s what everyone was telling him to do. ‘You’re becoming a woman now.’ they would say, and he didn’t understand why he felt like he couldn’t breathe when they said it. He put it down to his fear of growing up, like he did every time he didn’t understand his emotions.

Steve came out to Bucky as gay when they were thirteen. When Steve told him, Bucky’s first thought had been ‘me too’. He didn’t understand why that term felt so right when he didn’t really like girls. He didn’t like boobs, or curves, or _girls._ He just knew that he was attracted to the same gender. Perhaps he just wasn’t physically attracted to people. He had read something about asexuality, he didn’t know if that’s who he was, he just didn’t want to be with girls.

At the age of fourteen Bucky stopped eating. He told himself he wasn’t hungry; he just didn’t need as much food as most people. The anxiety that had been eating him up since he was eight finally quieted down when he was hungry. He learned to love the feeling of an empty stomach; the pain was exactly what he deserved. His body looking smaller every time he looked in the mirror was the only thing keeping a smile on his face. The curves he had developed would disappear if he kept going, and he held onto that hope like it was his only shot at happiness.

When he was fifteen, his anxiety was taking over his life. It had come back when he got his period, starving himself was no longer holding it at bay. Anxiety brought a friend this time, depression, and Bucky didn’t know any better, so he greeted them with open arms. The darkness was comforting, he didn’t have to feel anything when he let it in. He lost all his friends as they didn’t understand what was happening. Steve was the only one who stayed, Bucky didn’t understand why.

At the age of sixteen Bucky started experimenting with his gender expression. He would put his hair up under a hat and choose clothes that made him look more masculine. It somehow helped him feel less anxious when he left the house. Sometimes when he saw himself in a mirror when he had dressed that way he would smile, looking like a boy felt good. He read about being non-binary online and he felt like it fit with how he was feeling. He didn’t tell anyone, not even Steve. He usually told Steve everything, but this was too scary.

Steve told Bucky that ‘if you were a boy, I would be so crushing on you’ when he was seventeen. Bucky had tensed up and Steve got worried he had said something he shouldn’t have. Bucky had quickly reassured him it was fine and made some joke about ‘if you were a girl…’ to ease the awkwardness. Unbeknownst to Bucky this had triggered something inside of him, and that night he had a dream that he was a boy for the first time since he was seven.

On Bucky’s eighteenth birthday he cried, this was the moment his whole life had led up to. That’s when he realized his fear had never been about growing up, it had been about becoming a woman. But he didn’t want to be a woman, he wasn’t a woman. It wasn’t right. He had been dreaming about being a boy every night. It all made sense now, why everything had felt so wrong; the curves, the periods, his whole life. Why he had never been comfortable with being a girl, even when he tried so hard to shut out those feelings out. It was because he wasn’t a girl, he wasn’t supposed to develop breasts, or get his period. He’s a boy, the relief of finally knowing was overwhelming.

He came out to Steve when he was nineteen. He’d been wearing a binder, dressed like he wanted to and thought of himself as a boy for a little over a year. Nothing had ever felt so right before. He felt good, happy, he was learning to love himself again. Now that he knew that his insecurities were mostly gender dysphoria it was a little easier to deal with. Before he just hated those parts of himself and never thought that he could change them, but now he hoped he could change someday, when he’s ready for his physical transition. Steve just told him that he ‘kinda already knew’, he’d figured it out a while ago, and Bucky wasn’t surprised, he was bad at hiding his emotions from Steve.

When he was twenty, he and Steve got together. Steve used to say that they would be perfect for each other if Bucky was a boy, and now that Bucky had told him that he really was a boy they figured they would give it a shot. They were so close, the transition from friends to boyfriends wasn’t that much different. What Steve didn’t tell Bucky was that he’d crushed on him for years, for as long as he’d known Bucky was a boy. And Bucky didn’t tell Steve that he had had a secret crush on him for as long as he could remember.

Bucky had his top surgery when he was twenty-one, and as he was doped up on medications, he told Steve that he loved him for the first time. He’d loved Steve for a couple months, but he was too scared to tell him. Later, when he was back to himself, Steve asked him if he meant it. He told Steve that he meant it, Steve kissed him and told him that he loved him too. Bucky got a little emotional thinking of how much his life had changed since he found himself, how good his life was now, how he didn’t think he would ever be happy just a couple years ago, and how happy he is despite everything he’s been through.

When Bucky is twenty-two, he lives with Steve in a small apartment in Brooklyn. He’s studying to become a therapist; he wants to help others like him. It’s his and Steve’s two-year anniversary when Steve asks him to marry him. Bucky says yes with tears in his eyes. Of course he wants to spend the rest of his life with Steve, they grew up together, Steve stayed by his side when no one else did. He would be lost without Steve.


End file.
